Clinton
bears heavy responsibility for the carnage, which has by now displaced
more than 10 million Syrians and left more than 250,000 dead.

Hat Tip JS/AH/TD

Hillary Clinton and the Syrian Bloodbath

In the Milwaukee debate, Hillary Clinton took pride in her role in a recent UN Security Council resolution on a Syrian ceasefire:

But I would add this. You know, the Security Council finally got
around to adopting a resolution. At the core of that resolution is an
agreement I negotiated in June of 2012 in Geneva, which set forth a
cease-fire and moving toward a political resolution, trying to bring the
parties at stake in Syria together.

This is the kind of compulsive misrepresentation that makes Clinton
unfit to be President.

Clinton's role in Syria has been to help
instigate and prolong the Syrian bloodbath, not to bring it to a close.

In 2012, Clinton was the obstacle, not the solution, to a ceasefire
being negotiated by UN Special Envoy Kofi Annan.

It was US
intransigence - Clinton's intransigence - that led to the failure of
Annan's peace efforts in the spring of 2012, a point well known among
diplomats.

Despite Clinton's insinuation in the Milwaukee debate, there
was (of course) no 2012 ceasefire, only escalating carnage.

Clinton
bears heavy responsibility for that carnage, which has by now displaced
more than 10 million Syrians and left more than 250,000 dead. As every knowledgeable observer understands, the Syrian War is not
mostly about Bashar al-Assad, or even about Syria itself.

It is mostly a
proxy war, about Iran.

And the bloodbath is doubly tragic and
misguided for that reason.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the leading Sunni powers in the Middle East,
view Iran, the leading Shia power, as a regional rival for power and
influence.

Right-wing Israelis view Iran as an implacable foe that
controls Hezbollah, a Shi'a militant group operating in Lebanon, a
border state of Israel.

Thus, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel have all
clamored to remove Iran's influence in Syria.This idea is incredibly naïve. Iran has been around as a regional
power for a long time--in fact, for about 2,700 years.

And Shia Islam
is not going away.

There is no way, and no reason, to "defeat" Iran.

The regional powers need to forge a geopolitical equilibrium that
recognizes the mutual and balancing roles of the Gulf Arabs, Turkey, and
Iran.

And Israeli right-wingers are naïve, and deeply ignorant of
history, to regard Iran as their implacable foe, especially when that
mistaken view pushes Israel to side with Sunni jihadists. Yet Clinton did not pursue that route.

Instead she joined Saudi
Arabia, Turkey, and right-wing Israelis to try to isolate, even defeat,
Iran.

Then the CIA and Clinton pressed unsuccessfully for Plan B: to overthrow Assad.

When the unrest of the Arab Spring broke out in early 2011, the CIA
and the anti-Iran front of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey saw an
opportunity to topple Assad quickly and thereby to gain a geopolitical
victory.

Clinton became the leading proponent of the CIA-led effort at
Syrian regime change.

In early 2011, Turkey and Saudi Arabia leveraged local protests
against Assad to try to foment conditions for his ouster.

By the spring
of 2011, the CIA and the US allies were organizing an armed
insurrection against the regime.

On August 18, 2011, the US Government made public its position: "Assad must go."

The mercenaries sent in to overthrow him were themselves
radical jihadists with their own agendas.

The chaos opened the way for
the Islamic State, building on disaffected Iraqi Army leaders (deposed
by the US in 2003), on captured U.S. weaponry, and on the considerable
backing by Saudi funds.

If the truth were fully known, the multiple
scandals involved would surely rival Watergate in shaking the
foundations of the US establishment. The hubris of the United States in this approach seems to know no
bounds.

The tactic of CIA-led regime change is so deeply enmeshed as a
"normal" instrument of U.S. foreign policy that it is hardly noticed by
the U.S. public or media.

Overthrowing another government is against
the U.N. charter and international law.

But what are such niceties
among friends? This instrument of U.S. foreign policy has not only been in stark
violation of international law but has also been a massive and repeated
failure.

Rather than a single, quick, and decisive coup d'état
resolving a US foreign policy problem, each CIA-led regime change has
been, almost inevitably, a prelude to a bloodbath.

How could it be
otherwise?

Other societies don't like their countries to be manipulated
by U.S. covert operations. Removing a leader, even if done "successfully," doesn't solve any
underlying geopolitical problems, much less ecological, social, or
economic ones.

A coup d'etat invites a civil war, the kind that now
wracks Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

It invites a hostile
international response, such as Russia's backing of its Syrian ally in
the face of the CIA-led operations.

The record of misery caused by
covert CIA operations literally fills volumes at this point.

What
surprise, then, the Clinton acknowledges Henry Kissinger as a mentor and
guide? And where is the establishment media in this debacle?

The New York Times finally covered a bit of this story last month in describing the CIA-Saudi connection,
in which Saudi funds are used to pay for CIA operations in order to
make an end-run around Congress and the American people.

The story ran
once and was dropped.

Yet the Saudi funding of CIA operations is the
same basic tactic used by Ronald Reagan and Oliver North in the
Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s (with Iranian arms sales used to fund
CIA-led covert operations in Central America without consent or
oversight by the American people). Clinton herself has never shown the least reservation or scruples in
deploying this instrument of U.S. foreign policy.

Her record of avid
support for US-led regime change includes (but is not limited to) the US
bombing of Belgrade in 1999, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the
Iraq War in 2003, the Honduran coup in 2009, the killing of Libya's
Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, and the CIA-coordinated insurrection against
Assad from 2011 until today. It takes great presidential leadership to resist CIA misadventures.

Presidents get along by going along with arms contractors, generals, and
CIA operatives.

They thereby also protect themselves from political
attack by hardline right-wingers.

They succeed by exulting in U.S.
military might, not restraining it.

Many historians believe that JFK
was assassinated as a result of his peace overtures to the Soviet Union,
overtures he made against the objections of hardline rightwing
opposition in the CIA and other parts of the U.S. government.

Hillary Clinton has never shown an iota of bravery, or even of
comprehension, in facing down the CIA.

She has been the CIA's
relentless supporter, and has exulted in showing her toughness by
supporting every one of its misguided operations.